A widely used type of electrical connector receptacle, which is commonly referred to as a modular jack, comprises an insulating housing having a plurality, usually four to eight, of side-by-side conductors therein. The conductors are connected to wires which extend from the housing and have contact spring portions which extend from the housing and into a plug-receiving opening in the front of the housing. Receptacles of this type are dimensioned to receive connector plugs installed on the ends of wires and which have terminals therein that engage the contact spring portions of the conductors in the jack when the plug is inserted into the modular jack housing. The conductors may be drawn wire and connected to the wires extending from the jack receptacle by crimped connections, or they may be stamped and formed conductors, as shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,193,645. The modular jack conductors of this patent are intended to be inserted into holes in a circuit board and soldered to circuit board conductors.
While modular jack housings are usually produced as one-piece moldings having openings which receive the jack conductors, it is also common practice to mount the jack conductors in a support member which in turn is intended for assembly to a housing shell to produce a jack assembly consisting of the support member and the housing shell. The use of separate support members or sub-assemblies in this manner is advantageous in that a support member can be used with a wide variety of housing shells. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,088,384 shows the use of a jack sub-assembly in conjunction with an adaptor having a cover member with which the housing shell is integral. It is frequently desirable to mold the housing shell integrally with another part, such as the housing of a telephone instrument or a circuit box. These sub-assemblies can also be used with separate housing shells which may be designed for mounting under particular circumstances and have different types of mounting means integral therewith. The subassembly shown in the above identified U.S. Pat. No. 4,088,384 has conventional drawn wire conductors therein, which are connected to insulated wires by means of crimped connections. As mentioned above, stamped and formed conductors are also used for modular jacks and offer advantages under many circumstances.
It would be desirable to provide a jack sub-assembly having stamped and formed conductors therein rather than drawn wire conductors as disclosed in the above identified U.S. Pat. No. 4,088,384. It would also be desirable to provide an improved means for connecting the wires which extend from the jack to the jack conductors and avoid the need for using a crimped connection. It would, furthermore, be desirable to produce modular jack sub-assemblies of the type comprising an insulating support having conductors assembled thereto in a form which would permit a higher degree of automation than can be achieved with presently known modular jack sub-assemblies. Present assembly methods require that the drawn wire conductors be connected by crimped connections to the insulated wire conductors and then inserted either manually or by relatively complex insertion machinery into the support member. It would be preferable to have a jack sub-assembly which would permit these operations to be carried out with automatic or semiautomatic machines. The present invention is directed to the achievement of an improved modular jack sub-assembly which will meet these requirements of the industry.
A modular jack sub-assembly in accordance with the present invention comprises a molded insulating support member having side-by-side channels on one surface thereof and conductor-receiving cavities at its rearward end in alignment with these channels. The conductors are of stamped and formed sheet metal and each conductor has at its rearward end plate-like sections having wire-receiving slots therein which are dimensioned to be received in the cavities in the support. The sub-assemblies are produced as a continuous composite strip comprising a continuous strip of stamped and formed conductors with insulating support members assembled to the conductors. This composite strip can be fed to processing machinery, such as wire insertion machines, for inserting wires into the wire-receiving portions of the conductors and severing and shearing devices for shearing the individual sub-assemblies from the composite strip. These operations can be carried out by feeding the composite strip to the processing machinery and since the wire-inserting and severing operations can be carried out by specialized inserting and severing apparatus, substantial economies in the production of the finished sub-assemblies can be achieved.